


we built this house on memories

by jaekyu



Category: GOT7
Genre: M/M, OT7, Post-Disbandement, Unresolved Tension, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:56:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaekyu/pseuds/jaekyu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Years after disbandment, Yugyeom is getting married.</p><p>They're all invited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we built this house on memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hommage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hommage/gifts).



> alright, my dear recipient, i used a myriad of your prompts here to come up with this. i went with your desire for ot7, decided to have them reunite after disbandment and threw some markjin in here! hope you enjoy. ❤️

**PROLOGUE** :  
Jinyoung’s suit is ruined.

It’s rented, but it’s expensive, and it’s stained down the whole front of it with wine, a deep red like blood. Jinyoung’s tie and suit jacket hang off the curve of the sink, his dress shirt hangs unbuttoned off the curve of his shoulders.

The bathroom door creaks. Jinyoung lifts his head and catches himself in the mirror - a mess of disheveled hair and a growing stain on the split sides of his open shirt - but when Jinyoung’s eyes settle past his own reflection he catches Mark watching him, quiet as he’s always been.

But first: There is a wedding.

 

 

 

 **ONE** : Jinyoung.  
The invitation arrives on a Tuesday. Or, maybe it arrived before Tuesday. Perhaps it’s more appropriate to say a Tuesday is when Jinyoung’s assistant hands it to him.

(Together with their families KIM YUGYEOM & BAEK YERIN)

The invitation is trimmed with gold detail, it is floral and ornate. Something Yerin must have picked. The text is printed hard on a spotless off-white background, flowing script a gold that matches the decorations that surround it.

(Invite PARK JINYOUNG)

The piece of paper is thin between Jinyoung’s fingers. A gust of wind could send it flying off.

(To join them as they exchange their marriage vows. Reception to follow).

 

 

 

Jinyoung was happy when the media stopped putting “former member of JYP boy group GOT7” before his name in every headline. The past does seem to have a funny way of turning up just when you feel you’re rid of it, though.

Jinyoung’s assistant taps at the screen of her phone, plastic nails reverberating noise off the glass. She wears red lipstick everyday, Jinyoung has never seen her without it. “When’s the date again?” She asks.

Jinyoung slides his hand across the table towards her, invitation pinned under his fingers. Hyoeun, his assistant, picks it up off the table and examines it.

The situation is this: Yugyeom is getting married. Until Jinyoung was twenty-three and no longer filled with a sort of naive hopefulness anymore he was in a boy group with Yugyeom. Mark was twenty-four and he was there too. When Jinyoung was twenty-one and even more clueless he was in love with Mark. Maybe Mark loved him back.

Jinyoung isn’t twenty-one anymore, he’s not even twenty-three. He’s not in a boy group anymore and he’s certainly not in love with Mark but Yugyeom’s getting married. And Jinyoung is invited.

“You’re free,” Hyoeun finally says. “Are you going?” She cocks an eyebrow, eyeing him from around the square space of her phone.

Jinyoung is invited. Yugyeom is expecting him to go.

Mark is probably invited too.

Jinyoung picks his invitation back up, flips it over once. Twice. Considers folding it up into origami and forgetting about it. He was always good at calm and precise things. How many cranes was it that you had to fold before you got a wish?

“Of course I am.”

 

 

 

After the fact, Jinyoung will think he should have seen it coming.

Only - only what was there to see? After all that dust was kicked up and settled back again, Jinyoung will look back on the moments that lead to it all and convince himself of patterns that do not exist. There was no cryptic smiles, no secret looks of future guilt, no words that held some secret meaning, no context that was misread.

Jinyoung will convince himself otherwise. It’s called patternicity: the way our brains will find meaningful patterns in meaningless data.

Jaebum leaves. That’s the pattern: a straight line from debut to not renewing his contract when it ends. That’s it, that’s all. They haven’t spoken since.

They followed the news about Jaebum after he left. They didn’t talk about it but they all did and they all knew they did. Jinyoung read an article about how Jaebum was getting too big for his group, how the author thought Jaebum would be more successful solo then he could ever be as a member of GOT7.

At the time, it was like a knife in Jinyoung’s gut, twisting and drawing blood. Now, the thought of it brings him a sort of numbness, like a once bright scar that’s gone silvery white and nearly transparent.

 

 

 

 **INTERLUDE ONE:**  
After Jaebum leaves the dorm feels too big. Feels like infinite empty space pressing them all in from every angle.

Of all the millions of different way it could have been, no one ever imagined it like this. It was always the seven of them and forever etched across the skyline. They all thought a lot about it. About _us_ , about _all of us_ and about _for as long as we can_ and none of them ever thought that was a greedy thing to ask for. They all thought they could have that.

But they couldn’t, it would seem, and maybe that’s why Jinyoung left too. Jinyoung’s contract comes up after Jaebum’s. He signs on again, for another six years with JYP Entertainment, but stipulates he will no longer be pursuing activities with GOT7.

The thing about leaders is that they sort of stitch the whole group together. A bunch of loose strings that they carefully tug through the eye of the needle and sew together until they weave in and out of each other to create a whole. Jaebum was that for the other six of them - and with his departure comes a wide rip in their seem.

They all trickle out slowly after Jaebum, the steady drip of a leaky faucet.

 

 

 

 **TWO** : Mark.  
Mark is the last to receive an invitation, a consequence of distance. It arrives unceremoniously in the mail on a Friday. Opening the envelope is like opening a dusty photo album and being confronted with all the memories you closed the book on once before.

“You can say no,” Mark’s sister says after he tells her about the invitation over lunch the next day. Mark nods, picking at the remnants of his food. He draws figure eights in his pasta sauce, listens as his sister quickly changes the subject. “How’s your knee?”

The reason Mark avoids wearing shorts these days. A zipper scar stretches long down the vertical curve of his knee now, a reminder of his torn ACL. Mark went two weeks where he couldn’t walk, goes to physiotherapy, deals with residual pain and limited mobility, he wears a knee brace.

No one lands their tricks a hundred percent of the time.

“My knee is fine,” Mark tells his sister. “I think I’m going to go to the wedding.”

“What wedding?” His sister says lamely.

“Yugyeom’s wedding,”

Mark’s sister says nothing. She hums and stabs her fork through her salad.

Mark RSVP’s when he gets home. No plus one.

 

 

 

Mark was never cut out to be an idol. Not from the same cloth as Jaebum, Jinyoung, Youngjae. Even Kunpimook, if Mark’s finger on the pulse of his old groupmates is anything to go by. Maybe that’s why he held onto GOT7 longer than anyone else because, for him, it was GOT7 or it was nothing.

That’s it. Take a plane home, Mark. Go see your family, Mark. Be a normal person again, Mark.

We’re disbanding the group, Mark. It’s nothing personal, Mark.

Do you want to renew your contract, Mark?

He had declined. What they were going to do with him? Let him sit on their roster as an occasional featured artist and not much else. Mark wasn’t going to do that, so he refuses the contract renewal and takes a plane home. Back to California, he should say - a place that hasn’t been his home in years.

Time trickles by. Mark adjusts.

 

 

 

Mark has to barrow a suit from a friend. It doesn’t fit him quite right, his frame a little too wiry and thin for it, but Mark doesn’t bother making any adjustments. He slips the suit into a garment bag and folds it gently into his suitcase, places a pair of dress shoes on top.

His plane leaves in about twenty four hours. Mark’s checked-in already online. He’s reserved a room at one of the hotels Yugyeom and Yerin had sent him as a close and cheaper option. Mark had blinked at the e-mail for far too long, debating whether to ask who else was going to be there.

Him, yes. Jackson would come too. Probably Youngjae.

Jinyoung had just wrapped a movie - a crime thriller, he played that same tired old trope of detective obsessed with the case and with a troubled past. He might be there, Mark would think he’d have the time in that limbo between when a movie finishes filming and when it’s about to come out.

Kunpimook’s in Japan promoting his new album. Yugyeom’s and him still seem so close, though, and Mark imagines he’ll make the time to attend his best friends wedding.

Jaebum is - a wild card. Mark hasn’t heard much about Jaebum in years.

 

 

 

 **INTERLUDE TWO** :  
They exist in limbo. A step over the line and then a step back on the safe side of it. It’s fun, it’s harmless. They’ll be fine.

“We’ll be fine,” Mark and Jinyoung both assure Jaebum on separate occasions. Jaebum offers them both the same tight-lipped, mouth turned down slightly at the corner frown.

One night, when the dorm is in a rare state of stillness, Mark presses a dry kiss to Jinyoung’s mouth. And it’s fine, they’re fine.

Until it isn’t, until they aren’t.

 

 

 

 **THREE** : Jinyoung.  
There’s a party at Yugyeom’s house a few days before his wedding. Jinyoung attends, in pressed black slacks and a perfectly ironed white button-down tucked in.

“Your stylist pick this one?” Someone says to him. Jinyoung turns his head and finds Jackson standing behind him. Last Jinyoung heard Jackson was in France training fencing team Olympic hopefuls. Out of the spotlight but doing well for himself. He looks happy, a little weathered but happy. They all look a little weathered.

Jinyoung smiles, “I can pick my own clothes sometimes. The stylist is just for red carpets.”

“No paparazzi to impress here, is that it?” Jackson laughs, his face softening afterwards, “long time no see, man.”

A waiter carrying flutes of champagne flutters by and Jackson and Jinyoung each grabk a glass. Jinyoung sips carefully, then looks a little saddened at the bubbles in the champagne. “I know,” Jinyoung sighs.

Jinyoung has spoken to Jackson a total of twice, two whole times, since he left GOT7. Once when the news reached him Jackson had left too and a second time right before Jackson made the trip back to Hong Kong. The latter was only over the phone.

Jinyoung wonders constantly if there’s animosity between him and the other five he left behind after Jaebum left them all behind. Jinyoung always wonders if the rest of them wanted to hang on, or if they all felt that divide after everything. As if Jaebum had taken a knife and split them down the middle before he packed his things and tried to move on.

Jackson seems nothing but genuinely happy to see Jinyoung, which is a relief. Jackson’s never been one to hold grudges, though.

“I saw your movie,” Jackson says conversely.

“Which one?” Jinyoung asks. He notices a little harsher edge to Jackson’s Korean, a product of probably not having spoke it in a very long time.

“The spy movie, the one where you’re the bad guy,” Jackson makes his left hand into the shape of a gun, positions it near his eye to fake-aim and pretends to shoot Jinyoung. “I liked it. Your eye patch was cool.”

Jinyoung scoffs around the lip of his glass. “I’ll invite you to a premiere sometime, if you’re ever in town.” It’s half a joke and half sincere. A joke because Jackson’s never in town, sincere because Jinyoung doesn’t really take anyone to premieres. Sometimes the company is nice.

Jackson cheers his flute of champagne against Jinyoung’s, “I’m going to hold you to that,”

 

 

 

“I can not believe,” Jinyoung says, slinging an arm around Yugyeom’s shoulders as best he can, “the first of us to get married is our maknae. Unless there was some wedding I wasn’t invited too, in which case, fuck whoever did that. They don’t count.”

Yugyeom laughs, the same laugh he would laugh when they were some of the most important people in each other’s lives. It’s comforting, the way that even with all these changes some things just stay the same.

“How are you?” Yugyeom asks, smiling. Yugyeom wears his hair a golden and honey brown these days, coifed up stylishly. He looks older, in a way that can’t be ignored, but Jinyoung still looks at him and sees a baby.

“I’m alright,” Jinyoung says, “how are you? Still ready to marry your future wife on Saturday?”

“No cold feet yet,” Yugyeom replies, shaking out his left foot in front of him as if to demonstrate, “she makes it very hard to even think about cold feet.” A faint blush covers Yugyeom’s face. He’s so in love and he and Jinyoung may be nothing but old friends to each other now but that’s all Jinyoung could ever want for Yugyeom. To feel happy and loved and fulfilled.

They all chased those feelings. Some of them are still chasing them, some have given up. Yugyeom seems to have managed it all somehow.

 

 

 

Jaebum arrives like a thief. Which is to say: Jaebum arrives at night and nothing beyond that about him is like a thief.

Jinyoung had come to the party in the early evening, the sun just beginning to make it’s way to setting behind the horizon. When Jaebum steps over the threshold to Yugyeom and Yerin’s house the sky is inky black, peppered with stars you can only see when the clouds move aside to let you.

Jinyoung is making polite conversation with some of Yerin’s friends, they said they were, who recognized him. Jinyoung is good at small talk, he built his whole acting career on his talents as an actor and his talents in small talk.

The somehow still familiar figure of Jaebum stops Jinyoung dead in an explanation of which stunts he does himself and which stunts he’s, legally, not allowed to do. His eyes snap to Jaebum, the room roars with chatter but it drops to a dull buzz in Jinyoung’s ears.

Jaebum’s here, ripped jeans and a leather jacket over a slouchy offensively bright coloured button down shirt.

He hasn’t spoken to Jaebum in years. “Will you excuse me,” Jinyoung says, extracting himself from his previous conversation. He starts, with purpose, making his way to Jaebum. Jaebum is just standing there, lamely scanning the room not far from the entrance he just walked through.

Jaebum sees Jinyoung right before Jinyoung reaches him. Jinyoung’s hands are curled into fists and he has to remind himself he has no desire to give the media any reason to print any stories about him at this party. “Can I talk to you?” Jinyoung asks, braver than he ever expected.

Jaebum looks at Jinyoung, shocked. He stays quiet and unmoving for a few minutes, before he nods slowly and follows Jinyoung to a more secluded area at this party.

 

 

 

There’s a million ways Jinyoung imagined this happening.

For example: he gives Jaebum a piece of his mind, running on anger and betrayal. He asks Jaebum why, running on morbid curiosity. He turns his nose up at Jaebum, running on success and pride. He tells Jaebum exactly what leaving did to everyone around him, running on hurt and sadness.

What Jinyoung never expected was this: he levels a punch across the side of Jaebum’s face, connecting with his jaw and the side of his chin.

 

 

 

 **FOUR** : Mark.  
Mark is good at not being noticed.

GOT7 pulled him out of his shell but it’s been so long since that and maybe he’s regressed, if just a little bit. He’s at Yugyeom’s party and so far the only people who have recognized him are Yugyeom, who Mark went and congratulated himself, and Jackson. Him and Jackson always did have this sort of radar for each other, somehow intact after all these years.

Jinyoung has not noticed Mark. Mark has noticed Jinyoung.

Mark snatches a crab cake from a tray of hors d’oeuvres and stuffs it in his mouth when he notices Jinyoung, crossing the room to where Jaebum has just arrived. His hands are curled into fists, a determination in his eyes Mark’s seen only a few times before.

When Jaebum and Jinyoung disappear from view of the whole party Mark knows things aren’t going to end well.

 

 

 

He arrives just as Jinyoung’s fist collides with Jaebum’s face, knuckle prints blooming on the low swoop of Jaebum’s cheek just above his jaw. Jaebum puts a hand against his face and breaths in sharp through his nose.

Mark reaches out and circles two fingers around Jinyoung’s wrist, holding it down at his side and hoping to calm Jinyoung down.

The reality of the situation hits them all at once, it would seem. Everyone visibly tenses. The three of them, together, in a room. It’s been how many years? All of them know but none of them are willing to admit they were keeping track.

Jinyoung wrenches his wrist from Mark’s grasp and turns to look at him. Mark half-expects to get punched himself but Jinyoung only levels Mark with a simple narrow of eyes and takes off. Mark hears the front door slam not five minutes later.

“Mark,” Jaebum says, quiet and careful. Mark fixes his eyes on Jaebum, hand off of his cheek now and a bright red mark perfectly visible. “We should catch up,”

Mark swallows away his doubt. “Okay,” he replies.

 

 

 

“What have you been doing?” Catching up is a 24/7 internet cafe, two cups of tea and Jaebum asking Mark this question.

“I’m back in California,” Mark replies, drumming his fingers against the table. He doesn’t tell Jaebum he’s still looking for a job, that he wants to go back to school, that he keeps dipping into his savings to pay his rent, that he keeps nearly having to ask his parents for money.

“Back with your family,” Jaebum nods, taking a sip of tea, “that’s good.”

It could be better.

“What about you?” Mark asks.

Jaebum sighs, “honestly? Not much. The label I signed with out of JYP just dropped me. Wasn’t bringing in the numbers, I guess.” Mark’s at a loss for words, he blinks lamely, tongue limp in his mouth, “suppose I deserved it,” Jaebum smiles sadly.

“No, Jaebum -” Mark starts.

“You know,” Jaebum interrupts, staring down at his hands cupped around his mug of tea, steam rising from it slowly, “all these years later and I’m not sure why I did it anymore,”

 

 

 

 **INTERLUDE THREE** :  
“Where do you see us in five years?” Jinyoung says, threading his fingers with Mark’s. They sit on the couch, Jinyoung’s head on Mark’s thighs with his legs hanging off the arm rest. Mark breathes slow and steady against Jinyoung’s warmth.

“ _Us_ ,” Mark asks, gesturing between him and Jinyoung, “or all of us,” he gestures to the dorm around them.

Jinyoung hums, “both, I guess.”

“Happy, I guess,” Mark replies, running his free hand through a few messy strands of hair spread across Jinyoung’s forehead, “I think all of us will just be happy.”

Roughly a year later, Jaebum’s contract is not renewed.

 

 

 

 **FIVE** : Jinyoung.  
The ceremony is beautiful. Yerin looks beautiful, every single one of her bridesmaids, the gold drapery they hold rows of chairs together with is beautiful.

There’s a brief moment of panic when Kunpimook, who Yugyeom has stayed in close enough contact with to ask to be his best man, apparently, is delayed on a flight from Japan to Korea and arrives just in time for the ceremony.

Jinyoung looks Kunpimook over from his spot in his aisle seat, fifth row, groom’s side. He looks much older, a combination of years and the fitted suit he wears. His hair is dyed dark with a tint of red, cut short at the sides and left long on top, styled into a smooth flow across the top of his head. He has his ears pierced too, tiny gold hoops dangling from them. Jinyoung catches a glimpse of a tattoo on his inner left wrist.

Kunpimook - Bambam still when he’s on stage, he’s big in Japan now. JYP Entertainment’s top solo export. He makes more music for the Japanese market then he does for the Korean one. Takes his shirt off a lot. Which is decidedly very Kunpimook of him.

He’s successful, that’s impossible to deny. Again, Jinyoung hopes he’s happy. He looks very serious right now, so Jinyoung can’t tell. He makes a note to talk to him later.

The wedding’s somewhere between high and low profile. There’s a healthy collection of famous friends among just family members and all the normal people some of them tried to pretend to be. No one is breaking down the door trying to get photos but someone will probably pay a healthy sum for the ones the wedding photographer is getting right now.

Down the aisle from Jinyoung is Mark, who sits next to Jackson. Jaebum is rows and rows behind them, small bruise bloomed across his jaw. The person sitting at the piano Jinyoung eventually realizes is Youngjae.

That’s it, they’re all here, the seven of them in once place again. Somehow, the room hasn’t imploded. But right now they're all focused on the bride and groom, so Jinyoung doesn’t hold his breath for the reception.

 

 

 

The reception has an open bar. Jinyoung orders a glass of wine and the bartender delivers it to him in a timely manner. Jinyoung tips him a few single bills, which he’s thanked for, then takes a long sip, probably longer than recommended.

“Don’t drink that too fast, old man,” it’s Kunpimook, levelling Jinyoung with a playful jab in the shoulder. “Wouldn’t want you on the front cover of a gossip magazine because you stumbled home tonight.”

Jinyoung scoffs, “I’m barely twenty-six,”

“Is that a grey hair,” Kunpimook jokes, pulling at Jinyoung’s bangs and pretending to inspect them closer. Jinyoung bats his hands away, readjusts his hair. “You know Youngjae’s here, did you say hi? I know you’ve seen everybody else, Yugyeom told me all about it before the ceremony.” Kunpimook raises his eyebrows knowingly.

“I saw Youngjae a month ago,” Jinyoung replies, “he did an OST for a movie I did, he came to the premiere.”

“Right, the spy one,” Kunpimook nods, imitating the finger gun Jackson levelled Jinyoung with when talking about the same movie. Two peas in a pod still, the thought makes Jinyoung chuckle. “You know,” Kunpimook starts, tone serious, “Yugyeom was nervous about inviting everyone. I told him he had too. You can’t pretend the people you spent some of the most important years of your life with don’t exist.”

Jinyoung digests the words slowly. Kunpimook’s right. They’ve all built careers outside of what they used to be, what they used to do - but none of them would have been possible without the springboard that was GOT7. But, on top of all that, GOT7 was more than a springboard. It was the most important thing in Jinyoung’s life for years. He did so many things because of it - and he did it with all these same people.

“Bambam,” Jinyoung breathes, a slip of the tongue because he hasn’t called Kunpimook that name in years. Kunpimook doesn’t comment on it, simply asks what. “Do you - do you forgive everyone? For what happened?”

Kunpimook offers Jinyoung a small smile. “I’m Yugyeom’s best man, I think it’s pretty obvious I think he’s alright,” Kunpimook watches Jinyoung finish his glass of wine for a second, before he says, “but to answer your question, I never blamed anyone to begin with. There was nothing to forgive.”

“But we all -”

“Life goes on,” Kunpimook shrugs, “things change, you need a point a to get to a point b. There was nothing to forgive.”

Kunpimook seems happy. Jinyoung could learn a few things from him.

 

 

 

 **INTERLUDE FOUR** :  
“What now,” Mark says, deadpan voiced. He and Jinyoung stand opposite sides of the same room, previously two parts of the same whole but now more separate than ever before.

“Why is it my job to make the decision,” Jinyoung bites back.

Sometimes everything awful is so overwhelming you forget the good times ever existed. They get fuzzy in your head, a dream you had or a glimpse of a future that could have been yours but you made the wrong decision. Blue pill or the red pill, one side will you make you smaller, one side will make you larger.

Sorry, wrong answer.

“I’m asking what you _want_ , Jinyoung,” Mark replies, audibly frustrated with his hand pressed against his breast bone.

“I don’t know, I don’t know -” Jinyoung rambles, “I don’t want to be Junior anymore. I don’t want to make music, I want to be my own person with my own talents,”

Jinyoung wants to say come with me, we can come out together, we can be together. He doesn’t it. The words he doesn’t say are the beginning of the end.

“You’re saying you want to leave?” Mark accuses, voice a little lower than before. His anger has been replaced with hurt, a bruise on the organ beneath his hand on his ribs.

“I don’t know,” Jinyoung mutters, “I don’t know,”

It doesn’t matter. A few weeks later, they all know: the answer was yes.

 

 

 

 **SIX** : Mark.  
“You should talk to Jinyoung,” Mark says to Jaebum, who flanks his right as they watch people move about the dance floor. Kunpimook dances with Yugyeom’s mom, Jackson dances with Jimin. Mark would dance too, maybe, if he didn’t have a useless knee.

“Later,” Jaebum replies simply, taking a pull of the beer bottle clutched in his hand. He looks at Mark out of the corner of his eye, “you should talk to him too.”

“I don’t know what we would talk about,”

Jaebum snorts, “you know exactly what you would talk about, Mark.”

Jaebum sounds a lot like Mark’s sister, if she were more direct and sharp with her words. If she did more than just hum disapprovingly in the back of her throat.

 

 

 

Youngjae is the one among them who looks the most like his old self. A little awkward on his feet and his tux but the most genuine smile and demeanor and comforting hand on Mark’s shoulder as he talks to him. “I see Jinyoung every once and awhile,” Youngjae says, “I do a lot of OST’s these days, he does a lot of movies. We cross paths a lot in the business.”

“I haven’t seen any of his movies,” Mark admits. Youngjae is swaying to the beat, relaxed. Mark wonders if the tension he feels like an electric charge is just because of him and Jinyoung, because of Jinyoung and Jaebum. Everyone else seems to have broken free just fine.

Maybe Mark’s the only one with one hand still clutched around the past.

“They’re pretty good, he’s good,” Youngjae gesture to Jinyoung, only slightly, with his hand. Mark glances at him quickly to see him talking to Jackson and Jimin, sipping a glass of wine. If Mark’s counted right that’s his fourth glass of the night. “He came out, you know?”

“What,” Mark snaps his head back to look at Youngjae, who is decidedly not looking at Mark. His gaze is directed into the crowd of people waiting for Yerin to throw the bouquet behind her head.

“Yeah, about a year ago. It was in a lot of the papers,” Youngjae explains.

“I live in California right now,” Mark replies.

Youngjae nods, “he still gets a lot of work regardless, so that’s good. You should watch one of his movies sometime. He did this period drama that came out right after that was pretty good.”

 

 

 

The night winds down. The newlyweds cut their cake, smash it in each other’s faces, share chaste kisses when they think they can get away with no one looking. Kunpimook delivers a thoroughly embarrassing best man speech, the food is okay.

Mark gets up to go the bathroom a little after midnight, filing through a dwindling and more and more tired crowd to make it to the bathrooms that are, admittedly, a little out of the way. He moves to push open the door when suddenly familiar voices prick his ears.

“I’m sorry,” It’s Jinyoung, sounding guilty. Mark imagines the hand he probably is using to tug at the hairs at the back of his neck, a nervous habit.

“No, I -” Jaebum’s voices now, sounding shaken. “I’m sorry. What I did - it wasn’t fair.”

“It just felt like,” For a split second, Mark was afraid Jinyoung had punched Jaebum in the face again, but the tone of his voice now sounds so small and sad. Mark doubts Jinyoung has even made a fist since this conversation began. “You and I had been a team for so long, and it felt like you left and wanted me to pick up the pieces. And I _couldn’t_ , I didn’t even try, so maybe I was mad at himself too. I just convinced myself I was only mad at you.”

“Jinyoung,” Mark hears Jaebum breath out, “I didn’t want to make you feel that, I wasn’t thinking, I was just doing - but I didn’t want that.”

“I know, I know,” Jinyoung sighs, “Kunpimook said some stuff to me tonight. It made me realize. I was mad at you, at myself, and it’s not worth it anymore. It was never worth it. Things change, it happens all the time.”

Mark slinks against the wall, zoning in and out of the conversation that continues. Then, Jaebum says his name. “Mark,” he says to Jinyoung, “you should talk to him too. He wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t know what we would talk about,” Jinyoung murmurs.

“I think you do,” Jaebum replies simply.

The bathroom door creaks and Mark freezes up. It’s Jaebum, stepping out of the bathroom. He notices Mark and doesn’t give him a judging look, just a look to spur him into opening the door and talking to Jinyoung, who is trailing slowly behind Jaebum.

Mark does this - accidentally pushes the door open on Jinyoung, and upturns the others class of wine down the front of him.

 

 

 

 **EPILOGUE** :  
Jinyoung’s suit is ruined. His expensive suit is stained down the whole front of it with red wine, his shirt matches. He scrubs his hands with soap down the front of it and they come back tinged a light pink.

Mark’s watching him, quiet. Always quiet, always watching. Always asking and never telling. Jinyoung gives up, resigns himself to paying full price for his rented tux, and turns to face Mark, pressed up against the sink with one hand braced on it.

“What?” Jinyoung asks, maybe a little harsher than he meant. He feels sticky, wet and soapy. Mark blinks.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Mark replies, mouth forming carefully around each word. “Everyone keeps telling me we should talk.”

Jinyoung sighs, softens his voice a little compared to his previous words, says quietly, “okay, talk,”

Only Mark’s never been good with words. Those have never been his strong suit. Jinyoung was the one who read all the books and knew all the different ways to say the same thing, all the soliloquies you could use to convey certain feelings. The quotes to elicit certain responses.

Mark tugs at one of the open edges of Jinyoung’s button down, pulls him close and kisses him. It’s a lot like that first time - a dry press of closed lips, nervous and searching. That was years ago, they’re both so different.

Funny how the past catches up with you. Funny what things stay the same as time goes by.

“That’s not talking,” Jinyoung says when they pull apart, “you were never good at talking.”

“I was never good at talking,” Mark agrees, his knuckles brush Jinyoung’s cold stomach.

“At some point we need to talk,” Jinyoung says forcibly, small smile creeping into the corner of his mouth. Mark gives a short laugh. “You live in California now, right?” Mark nods. “Come visit me sometime, I’ll fly you out.”

“You don’t have to,”

“We need to talk,” Jinyoung repeats, “and I need a date for premieres.”


End file.
